I woke up this morning with the surprising news that TapSplosion v2.0 has been approved! It is now live in the Marketplace .

It’s surprising because Microsoft had no problems with the word “Achievements”… I’ve heard lots of stories about Xbox Live Indie Games not being allowed to use “Achievements” so I was expecting the same to apply to WP7.

Anyway, Enjoy the update! and I’ll be updating you guys on my new project later.

So, TapSplosion with Achievements has been submitted to Microsoft, and if approved should arrive in the marketplace on Friday, BUT … “Achievements” is a term which I fear Microsoft reserve for Xbox Live games, and the game may be failed on this. If it is failed, I think “Awards” is the next best thing, so it will be changed and re-submitted.

I shall keep you posted on any news, and when it is released!

What Now?

I’ve finished TapSplosion v2.0, I think now it is time to go back to working 1 hour a day on a new project! This will start tomorrow, I’m not 100% sure on what the new project will be, but I have a few ideas. I’ll also be taking time out of my schedule to update TapSplosion more and more, but that will probably be only when I have time to do more than 1 hour a day. (Weekends and Holidays?)

I’ll also try to implement Achievements into the Free version if there is enough of a cry for them, I just feel Achievements are something that people should pay to acquire!

So as promised in the last post, I have indeed been working on TapSplosion again since no I have no University work to be doing! I’ve been working longer than an hour a day though, but I’m allowed to catch up on previously missed time =P.

Over the past couple of days I’ve been working on adding Achievements into TapSplosion, I’ve got all of the Artwork and it looks excellent so everything is moving along nicely at the moment! Tomorrow I will update again with screenshots and maybe a video of Achievements in action, and hopefully by Wednesday the Update should be submitted! I’m only planning on adding Achievements into the Paid version of the game, and maybe into the free version after a few weeks have passed. I’ll have to wait and see!

Apologies for the recent lack of updates, it has been a busy time for me. It’s the dieing weeks of my Final Year at University, so as you can expect it has been pretty busy! The bank holidays over the easter didn’t help either =).

I’ve completed 2 out of 4 university modules, and should have the others complete soon. From Saturday onwards I will pledge to get started on this project, and will be blogging at least more regularly, but will try to be daily!

I’ve been working (slowly) on achievements! Also waiting on some artwork which should make it’s way to me over the weekend. But this update is not really about Achievements, it’s about what I’ve decided to do on the Free Version of TapSplosion.

So after working with Millennial Media for the adverts in the Free Version since release, I’ve decided to swap to the official Microsoft Ad SDK, and wait until they support countries outside of the UK to be paid. I’ve had poor results with Millennial Media and if I’d been with Microsoft from launch of the game then I’d probably be a lot better off financially too if peoples figures are to believed.

Unfortunately these adverts are slightly larger in size, so there has been a reduction in size of the play area, but it is still awfully fun!

I’ll update very soon about achievements, and will post a video to show them in action too!